The present invention relates to a method of and apparatus for digitally recording data such as a video signal on a recording medium such as a magnetic tape.
In U.S. patent application Ser. No. 784,720, now abandoned, corresponding to Japanese Patent Application No. Hei 2 (1990)-294672, the assignee of the present invention proposed a digital video tape recorder using a track format as shown in FIG. 1A. In this format, an automatic track following (ATF) or pilot signal is recorded at the beginning of each track, followed by video and audio data in a video and audio data region formed of sync blocks. Additional audio data may be recorded in a separate region subsequent to the video and audio region. Subdata (a subcode) follows the separate audio data region.
As shown in FIG. 1B, in each sync block, in the region where both video and audio data are recorded, the video data is positioned before the audio data.
In U.S. patent application Ser. No. 899,615, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,424,850, corresponding to Japanese Patent Application No. Hei 3 (1991)-153403, the assignee of the present invention proposed interleaving of the audio data recorded in a recording region dedicated exclusively for audio data. However, in this proposed format, the audio data are positioned contiguously. Consequently, if there is a flaw or a series of erroneous data on the magnetic tape or a dropout in the reproduced signal, it is difficult to reproduce the data properly. Specifically, error correction is difficult to perform, and so a reproduced signal is likely to include noise when such a flaw is present in the magnetic tape or dropout occurs in the reproduced signal.